Agreement processes in sentence comprehension

Three experiments examined the processing of subject-verb agreement in sent ence comprehension. Experiment 1 used a word-by-word self-paced moving wind ow reading methodology, and participants read sentences such as rile key to the {cabinet/cabinets} {was/were} rusty from many years of disuse. When th e head noun (key), local noun (cabinet), and verb were all singular, readin g times after the Verb were faster than when either a plural local noun or plural verb was present. Experiment 2 used an eyetracking paradigm and reve aled a pattern like that in Experiment 1, with a finer grain of resolution. Agreement computations influenced processing within one word after encount ering the verb, and processing disruptions occurred in response to both agr eement violations and locally distracting number-marked nouns, despite the fact that neither is a priori relevant for comprehension in English. Experi ment 3 revealed an asymmetry in the pattern of disruptions that parallels e rror distributions in language production (e.g., Beck & Miller, 1991). The results suggest that agreement is an early, integral component of comprehen sion, mediated by processes similar to those of production. (C) 1999 Academ ic Press.